But it's that same job, fighting fires, breathing in all that smoke, that puts him at an increased risk of getting cancer.

"It makes you check yourself in the career," Eaton says. "Because you know not only are there the seen dangers, but there is this unseen danger that you can't know when you are getting exposed or know what your levels are," says Eaton.

So Eaton is taking the fight to cancer before it even starts.

He's collecting his stem cells and storing them at the South Florida Bone Marrow/Stem Cell Transplant Institute, in Boynton Beach.

Think of it like your own personal biological vault, but instead of money, you lock away the one currency that can keep you alive: stem cells.

Dr. Dipnarine Maharaj is a pioneer in the stem cell transplant movement. Inside his lab, trillions of stem cells are collected, frozen and stored. They are good for up to 40 years or until a patient needs them to fight disease.

"The stem cells, which are the basis of our immune system, we can collect it and keep it. That person's immune system is essentially frozen in time," says Maharaj.

Maharaj operates under the belief that all of us have cancer in our bodies right now, and the only difference between a healthy person and a cancer patient is a healthy immune system.

"Is there any concern that this would not work?" asked WPBF 25 anchor Paul LaGrone.

"The concern would be that at the time we collected the person's own immune system that there was a problem. Then it would not work as well, but what we already know is that even when patients develop cancer, we can still use their stem cells and get long-term survival," Maharaj said.

Eaton says doing this now gives him peace of mind.

"My goal with this on a personal level is to put myself in a position where if I develop cancer later in life, I can recapture my immunity," says Eaton.

Maharaj believes this could be the key to breaking new records in how long people live. The one catch? Freezing your stem cells costs about $15,000, and most insurance plans don't cover it.

There are financing options available, and for a couple hundred dollars a month, you can pay for it.